Provost Dan Hornbach sent a memo to all Department Chairs on Nov. 22 requesting their cooperation in eliminating twenty sections of classes for next year’s schedule by removing at least one course each. According to Hornbach, the money that is saved through this cutback will go toward slowing the slide in faculty compensation that has been continuing for the past several years.

There are currently an average of 750 sections taught yearly although according to Hornbach, over the past few years there have been more taught.

Enrollment will not change, Hornbach said, meaning that the average class size will most likely increase by 0.5 students.

“We have lost ground on faculty compensation compared to other colleges, and I am concerned about attracting and retaining high quality faculty,” Hornbach said.

The school is currently dealing with a projected deficit of $2.4 million, which directly relates to the lack of spending that has been allocated to faculty salaries over the past several years. The money that is freed up by the reduction in courses (which, according to Math Department Chair Danny Kaplan will be between $100,000 and $200,000) will not go towards balancing the budget, but will be added to the pool of $12 million that faculty compensation is drawn from.

The courses to be removed will only be those taught by temporary (visiting) faculty. This is because the Provost does not have the authority to change the course load of those in tenure or tenure-track positions because they are controlled by the Educational Policy and Governance Committee (EPAG), which was formed this year in replacement of several committees, including the Long Range Planning Committee (LRPC) and the Curriculum Committee.

Hornbach suggested to the Chairs that the easiest way of removing one course would be to not replace one or more of those taught by Chairs or professors that are on sabbatical. Each year, according to Hornbach, there are an average of twenty professors on sabbatical. The departments were requested to report back to the Provost by the end of this week.

The memo also indicated that discussions are ongoing with EPAG to raise the student faculty ratio from 10:1 to 11:1, as was recommended by last year’s Task Force on Academic Quality, which would eventually remove 14 tenured positions.

In 1997 Macalester ranked at the median among the list of 40 comparison schools compiled six years ago by the LRPC for professors’ salaries, according to a memo distributed to faculty last spring by the Task Force on Academic Quality and Structure. Having consistently dropped over the past five years, this year Macalester ranked at the top of the fourth quartile.

Hornbach offers two explanations for this slide. First, the college made a decision five years ago, in response to the decreasing value of our endowment, five percent of which is used each year for operating expenses. Instead of raising tuition, he said, we decided on two years of flat increases in faculty compensation—meaning they would go up by only two or three percent yearly, just above inflation, instead of the four or five percent that they would normally be raised.

The second issue that Hornbach points out is Macalester’s position in the stock market. While most schools have money invested in diversified stocks, the bulk of the school’s endowment (the gift of DeWitt Wallace) was given in the form of Reader’s Digest stock. While the Digest stock was losing value in the late ‘90s, the overall stock market was actually doing well. This explains why Macalester’s financial crunch occurred while other schools were gaining ground and therefore able to adjust their faculty salaries accordingly.

While salaries that are relatively lower are a concern in terms of attracting faculty, it is not something generating much concern among current professors. Biology Department Chair Lin Aanonsen, who headed the Task Force on Academic Quality, said “I don’t think people would complain. But when it comes to hiring, it’s a big deal.”

The memo sent out by that task force in the spring addressed this concern and made suggestions for how the school might approach ameliorating the situation amid the current budget crisis. “If we cannot be competitive with our 40 comparison colleges, we risk losing the ability to attract the very best new faculty and keep the excellent faculty we have,” the memo said.

While discussion of the task force’s more long term recommendations to eliminate tenured positions is currently going on within EPAG, Hornbach says that his effort is “a good thing to do in this intermediate time. The economy won’t go away, but it can only get better, not worse. What I’m hoping is that this will help us stop the slide until conditions improve.”

Hornbach said that the goal to cut 20 sections is flexible, and he knows that for some departments, a cut is simply not possible. The Linguistics and Classics departments, for example, both of whom have three or fewer full time faculty, will most likely be unable to make the adjustment.

Classics Department Chair Andy Overman said that cutting even one section could be potentially disruptive to majors who need certain courses.

For those departments that can cut a section, Hornbach suspects that it will be mostly courses not part of the core curriculum that will go.

Seemingly the 20 fewer sections will not make much of a visible impact.

Aanonsen’s position, in her role as Chair of the Biology department, suggests that things may be more complicated, however. While she is still in the decision-making process, she said that right now the most logical section to cut will be one that supports another department and is popular with non-majors – a loss that would certainly be felt by students.

Geography Department Chair David Lanegran said that he had askedthe Provost to maintain the same number of geography sections for next year and then cut two sections the following academic year.

Other department chairs that were contacted were unwilling to disclose their current plans, as no decisions have yet been finalized.

President Mike McPherson said he supported Hornbach’s decision. “Nobody is thrilled at any cuts,” he said, “but I do think everybody agrees that we need a balanced budget and to do that will require adjustments on a number of fronts. This proposed reduction of 20 classes is 20 out of a very large number, and if done thoughtfully is in my view a very sensible step.”

According to the numbers posted online (but accessible on-campus only), faculty and staff salaries combined comprise 63.9% of our operating budget of over 54 million dollars. Over twelve million of that is devoted solely to faculty salaries. Staff salaries make up even more, and deviate less from the median compared to the LRPC comparison colleges. According to Hornbach the variation among types of staff that the school employs (including secretarial and professional staff) make that issue “harder to deal with.”

“To me, the place that is most important is faculty salaries,” Hornbach said. “Nobody likes going back to fewer classes, but people also want to retain and get good people. These are the realities of our situation. I’d rather put money in the engine than in extra cupholders.”